Homesick

Anne Sewitsky

Year

2015

Runtime

102 min

Language

Norwegian, Swedish

Country

Norway

Principal Cast

Ine Wilmann, Simon J. Berger, Silje Storstein, Anneke von der Lippe

A brooding and sharply detailed study of
incest, Anne Sewitsky's Homesick focuses
on Charlotte (Ine Wilmann), a young woman
whose happy-go-lucky exterior masks an
enormous amount of rage and pain — much
of it directed towards her mother (Anneke
von der Lippe), a caustic academic who
heaps scorn on all those around her.

Charlotte has no outlet or salve for
her anger in the people around her: her
mother isn't exactly one for listening to or
caring about other people's problems; her
father is dying; her best friend Marte (Silje
Storstein) has recently gotten married and
is now too busy; and even her shrink cuts
her short. Enter one of the few people who
understands Charlotte's pain: her standoffish
half-brother Henrik (Simon J. Berger),
who was abandoned by Charlotte's mother
at a young age and who pines for an imaginary,
impossible home life in the same way
Charlotte does. This shared yearning brings
the two closer and closer together, until they
are finally tempted to violate one of humanity's
oldest taboos.

With a uniformly strong cast headlined
by the remarkable Wilmann — making
her screen debut with a bold and uninhibited
performance — nuanced direction by
Sewitsky (who more than delivers on the
promise of her 2011 Sundance prizewinner
Happy, Happy) and a tough and insightful
script from the director and her co-writer,
Ragnhild Tronvoll, Homesick goes beyond
the forbidden relationship of Charlotte and
Henrik to take aim at some of the larger
problems of modern life: its crushing pace,
its refusal to make room for issues that can't
be solved easily or quickly, and its conception
of "freedom" as meaning nothing more
than the absence of responsibility.